


Squall

by Anythingtoasted



Category: The Last of Us
Genre: F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-04-16
Updated: 2014-04-16
Packaged: 2018-01-19 16:28:42
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,283
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1476376
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Anythingtoasted/pseuds/Anythingtoasted
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Canon compliant, set just after the events of the Ellie & Riley thread in "Left Behind".</p>
            </blockquote>





	Squall

**Author's Note:**

> Just to clarify; there is no sex in this fic.

“Let’s get out of here.” but where to, she doesn’t know.

The virus is like fleshy hands, gripping her ribs, tacking themselves to the underside of her lungs, squeezing. She wonders if it spreads this fast or if it’s just because she knows she’s bitten. She felt fine before she saw it; she felt good, even; adrenaline rush over her skull, heart squeezing and swelling over and over and over.

Ellie allows herself to be led. Her fingertips slip, half sticky, half slick with blood; she makes a soft noise of discomfort when she trips, but is otherwise silent.

They find a rooftop - it doesn’t matter which - and plant themselves on top of it where rain has made puddles wide and ringed with colour from oil; where the ground is wet, weeds pushing through the gaps between concrete tiles.

She has to look like she knows what she’s doing; she sits down. Ellie joins her, softer, less sure. Her body barely makes a sound when she drops it beside her, and Riley takes a few moments, more than a few, to realise that Ellie’s hand has slid fully into hers; her skin stings around the open bite, still bleeding.

She thinks there should be words, if these are their last moments together. Something large, something that aches. There are words inside her somewhere; like her body is a hollow can, one of those tin cylinders that last forever, cracked open on the sidewalk. She saw a boy once, someone starving, crumple a tin of pineapple on a stone and gasp aloud when the slick yellow liquid slid over his fingers, into the cracks in the tarmac. She’d watched, fascinated, as he pressed his face against the ground and sucked. She’d decided never to be so desperate; she realises now it wasn’t her choice to make.

Their skin sticks together with blood, the open wound congealing. Even now her body tries to heal itself, tries to knit together the flesh though what’s inside will do the damage. Ellie is grasping her arm like it will make a difference; Riley lifts Ellie’s bloodied palm to her mouth and opens a mouth over her knuckle, just because she can. It doesn’t matter now.

She thinks she would have kissed her, kissed her sooner, if she’d known how it would end.

It comes on so quickly; her vision blurs. Ellie startles when she slants forward and almost falls from the rooftop; the image in her head is so clear, slamming feet-first into the ground, legs crumpling, that she almost believes she really did it.

But Ellie is holding her arm, yelling in her face. Her eyes are bright; Riley can barely focus. She feels feverish, she feels like she’s going to cry. Sweat is pooling in her armpits, running rivulets down her sides, and it’s not even warm. Ellie touches Riley’s face and says something but she sounds far away; something is roaring, something smells strange, something is rushing towards her at high speed; a mushroom cloud, an atom bomb, stories she read when she was small and no one spoke to her. She hasn’t been held many times in her life, but she knows what it feels like. Ellie’s arms around her are too warm.

She’s talking but she’s not really saying anything, babble, mouth tasting mud and sweat on Ellie’s shoulder. She loves this girl but it’s not a family. She can see the sky over Ellie’s shoulder and it is wide and fraught and terrible. She sobs, and is embarrassed; her eyes cloud over and the world trembles, earthquakes raging, storms swirling up, indignant at her fate.

The world comes back in droplets, and nothing is happening. Ellie is gripping her so tight she might suffocate; she’s beating her back with a fist, she’s not even saying words. When she realises Riley is limp in her arms, she pulls back and holds her by the shoulders.

“Are you okay?”

She shakes her head, the truth.

“What’s happening?” She sounds terrified, but Riley is more scared, she knows.

Something happens, something’s missing, the rooftop is awash with rain now and the two of them are soaked, and Ellie is shouting above the din. She says something, her mouth slips, her voice slips with it; Riley tries to reply, and slurs. The space behind her head is boiling; she touches her head with her hands, and Ellie catches them.

“Can you hear me?”

“I blacked out.”

“Riley? Can you hear me?”

She thought she’d spoken it aloud. Darkness swarms, her skin feels as if insects are crawling underneath it; like her veins are alive, and fit to burst. It could have been hours, days. She’s cold. She’s too warm. Ellie is squeezing her hands so  _tightly_.

————-

It goes like this, in stages.

From bite to fever can take a few minutes, an hour, a day. At first, people thought nothing of it; get a tetanus shot, tell the local news about your encounter with that psycho who sunk his teeth into your arm. Minutes later you’re delirious, screaming yourself hoarse from your own bedroom window as your family and friends try and fail to hold you down.

They’re strong, the sick, and their brittle bones seem to tighten in their rage, slam out and crack the heads of the well and the living, strike hard enough to shatter skulls, break teeth. It’s around the third hour for some that the anger starts rising; that they lash out, scream inhuman, start to shake and titter and garble their speech. For Riley it takes an hour and a half, and Ellie has to grip her wrists to keep her from strangling, cries as Riley shakes her head and strings of saliva fly, blood trailing slow from her nose when the vessels burst.

They’re more lucid after; words are slippery things, so they give up. Their speech turns to chittering bird-noise, but they seem content. Ellie curled up with her on the rooftop and whispered in her ear, Don’t go. They slept like dogs, arms flung over each other, Ellie’s hands tight over her middle, mouth at her ear, all night, Don’t go.

She woke in the middle of the night to Riley screaming. She didn’t look like herself anymore; eyes wide, hands shaking, staring blankly past Ellie’s ear as if she wasn’t there at all.

She has to fight her off; she pins her wrists to the ground but is winded by kicks, weakened by the screaming. One long unending howl is all Riley seems able to make, like she is drowning; one formless, blood-thick wail against Ellie’s neck. At once, pitiful and terrifying; nothing like Riley. Nothing at all.

Riley kisses her forehead. She never comes back, after that. 

Two days, they are on the rooftop; Ellie trying to hold her away, Ellie begging her not to go. The only family she has and it is howling its madness against the bare skin of her neck; it is trying to bite her.

It’s not supposed to take two days. Two hours perhaps, two minutes for the virus to rise but never so long as this.

Marlene finds her; unflanked by Firefly troops; for once, just a woman. Riley’s body is at Ellie’s feet; her face is somewhere else. This little girl is two bullets less, sleeping with her eyes open, hands balled like fists so tight she can barely unfurl.

They fill her with food and water back at the safehouse. Like penitent worshippers, the Fireflies come forward to her, half-comatose child; touch her arm with awe and fear.

“You can’t be here for long,” Marlene tells her, leaving out  _please save us_. Leaving out,  _I’m sorry._


End file.
